Mindful Resistance to Trump

[Faramond]

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1 ... indfulness

I posted this in the gun thread but it got lost there which is really my fault.

I think this piece is important enough to highlight here.

I don't have too much more to say about it now just that I wish more people opposed to Trump would follow something closer to this philosophy.

[Impenitent]

Yes, "unproductive outrage" - being ruled by emotion and locking out the mind. This on both sides.

[Sunsilver]

I've been doing this, without really being aware it had a name.

If I see an anti-Trump post that is inflammatory, I don't share it. (If it's an especially good cartoon, I MAY save it to my personal file, though... )

If what I see is patently false, I use factual sources, like Snopes, to discredit it. I've done this with both conservative and liberal posts.

For instance, a far right-wing media outlet was claiming that a video showed Muslims rioting in the streets, causing property damage and blocking traffic flow. Something didn't look right to me - one of the rioters was carrying a French flag. I researched the video, and what it ACTUALLY showed was taxi drivers rioting in France, protesting the introduction of new laws that were going to cut into their business! (Might have been the government allowing Uber - I've forgotten the exact details now.)

[Dave_LF]

A little preamble; here is my sole political post from social media (reproduced elsewhere so everyone can see it):
https://lastcallformead.wordpress.com/2 ... ald-trump/

And here's a link I posted and defended in the election thread shortly before the fact:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-t ... lks-about/

All this is to say that I fundamentally agree with your article, and I live by it too. But I frequently wonder whether I've been wrong to do so. To put it bluntly, I'm pretty sick of having to be the bigger person all the time. It would be one thing if it worked, but I see no evidence that it has; quite the contrary. And even more than that, I'm sick of having to hear that, when the other guy is small, his smallness is my own fault. My own fault because I, or rather some public figure I'm assumed to proxy, hasn't been "nice" enough. Why the double standard, exactly? Why isn't it the jerk's fault that I'm mad? Especially given that he's the one who's actually winning the elections, and it's his guy who's taken to threatening nuclear war via Twitter? Pause for a moment to think about what it means that I just typed the second half of that sentence without exaggeration or irony. We're basically living in a reductio ad absurdum argument against the Republican party, and the thing you're worried about is whether "coastal elites" are too mean about it?? What do these "elites" do that's so awful, anyway? Crack jokes on late night talk shows? Oh boo hoo. To make up for it, Mr. and Ms. offended Republican, here's full control of the federal government, and most state and local ones too. You don't even need a majority! It's a pretty good deal, I think.

Back to the subject: there comes a point where a jerk is just a jerk, and trying to accommodate him only makes him jerkier. Of course, throwing insults back just encourages him, and unless you're a jerk too, it puts you at a disadvantage (he'll drag you down to his level and beat you with experience, as the saying goes). So what do you do? To tell the truth, I don't really know; I was never much good at dealing with bullies. But surely there's a point, somewhere, where you cease trying to win the jerk over and focus your efforts on stopping him instead. You still need to understand him in the intellectual sense of the word so you know how to beat him, but the sympathetic approach needs to stop somewhere. And that somewhere should probably be before the Nazi rallies start. That doesn't mean you go around hurling insults at random, because that doesn't do any good, but it does mean you don't need to be overly bothered if the jerk accuses you of hurting his feelings. It was a tactical error at worst.

I do have sympathy for the legitimate grievances people have, and I understand the impulse to lash out and throw a wrench into the system in response. But that impulse is a childish one, and government isn't a game. That said, I can forgive someone who voted for Trump last November, even if (maybe especially if) it was nothing more than a fit of pique. We all make mistakes. But to still be behind him at this point... that's another matter.

I've deleted a ton of material from this post and now it sounds rambling and incoherent, but I don't know what else to say. :nausea:

[Primula Baggins]

It’s a good post, Dave.

[Griffon64]

My text editors at work and home are littered with saved documents of posts that I wrote up but never made.

One of those saved posts is in response to something posted on this board awhile ago, but it has become relevant again with the topic of this thread.

I will try to pull that thought into a coherent write-up when I have time. Hopefully this weekend. I work full days at a mentally taxing job and I don’t have energy for much outside of it, but I think this is a really important topic to address and a really important conversation to have. I just don't want to address it half-cocked and then spend my time addressing responses to arguments I never made and positions I never held.

[Primula Baggins]

Griffy, I look forward to hearing what you have to say. I would describe my current mental state on all these issues as “concussed.”

[JewelSong]

Good article. My favorite sentence: "Maybe, just as Michael Jordan and Roger Federer are natural athletes, Trump is a natural asshole. We all have our special gifts."

[Frelga]

".@gabrielsherman: GOP source says Kelly & Mattis discuss what to do if Trump lunges for the nuclear football #inners" https://t.co/porBwgBB2V"

[Primula Baggins]

It's unclear whether the "GOP source" was reporting an actual conversation or speculating about the kind of conversation now going on in the White House.

Not that we can derive a lot of comfort from that. . . .